Recording - July 2018 - 16

The Life And Times Of

MIXERMAN

all from the Eighties. They were used
to mixing for vinyl and they weren't
changing the way they did things just
because we switched to CDs... perhaps
rightly so, since a lot of listening systems
boosted the low end anyway.
They wanted a "hip hop rock album,"
but they didn't even know how to
express that to the mixers. I got in there,
and not knowing any better, I mixed it
like a hip hop record. I put some real
low end in there, and they were super
happy about that. So I got that gig, but
the minute I did a rock album, none of
the hip hop guys wanted anything to do
with me any more. [laughs]

Do you still do any tracking, or do you
prefer to only do mixing now?

I don't do any tracking, except for my
audiobooks. The only time I'm ever involved in tracking is as a producer, and
even in that role I have guys that do it for
me, like Julian Dreyer and Jim Georgeson
at Echo Mountain. Then I can just focus
on the producing. I got really good at
tracking, but I don't think like an engineer.

care of from the producer's position. The
mic position and the preamp and compression are set, they're already good-
but maybe now the drummer is playing
a little harder, which isn't unexpected. A
good engineer should know to leave a little
room for the drummer to play harder.
When you have a designated engineer, that's useful, but when you're a producer who also engineers, that stuff just
gets in the way of your decision-making.
When you're concerning yourself with
sound, you're not concerning yourself
with the performance, and if you're not
concerning yourself with performance,
you're concerning yourself with all the
wrong things.
I can make a much bigger impact by
changing the pattern on the tambourine
than I could ever make by changing the
mic. I could put fifty different mics on the
tambourine and it would make absolutely
no difference in my recording, but if I

change that pattern, it could make all
the difference in the world. So once you
start to think in those terms, you start to
realize that the sound is irrelevant. That's
why I say I don't think like an engineer-
when I'm worried about arrangement, I
don't want to think about sound.

Are there any mistakes you hear over
and over in the tracks you get to mix,
that you'd like to shout from the rooftops not to make?

It's more what I read online that tells
me where everybody's confused. You
look at the questions and you see that
these are musicians who think that the
way to improve their tracks is to get
better at recording, and that requires
gear and all this stuff, and they stress
out about sample rates... I want to tell
them, "I'm sorry, but 90% of everything
that I get is at 44.1 or 48, and that is
never, ever going to prevent you from
having a hit!" There are a lot of things
that will prevent you from having a hit,
but sample rate is not one of them. And
then there's parallel compression. They
talk about parallel compression as if it's
an absolute necessity, and there are
thousands of records I've worked on

What do you mean?

Well, this is what my next book
is going to be about. When you're
engineering and doing your job right,
you're concentrating on keeping the
technology out of the way of the producer
and the artists. They don't have to think
about it! You're making sure that everything is captured the way it's supposed
to be captured, that stuff sounds the
way it's supposed to sound.
As a producer, I just want to think about
the music and arrangement decisions.
When the band is playing the first take
and it's not sounding right, as a producer, I
say, "This is a performance issue." As an
engineer, I want to turn knobs! I want to
change compression settings and change
mic pres and whatever.
When I started doing both jobs as a
producer/engineer, I realized that 90% of
my engineering decisions could be taken
16

RECORDING July 2018

"If you're a metal guy and you want to make a record like
Metallica, you're going to have to go into a big studio... But
if you're a metalhead and you want to make a record that's
its own unique thing, then you can make that at home."

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2018